


Who You Selling For?

by ironnomad



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-10 02:15:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18929263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironnomad/pseuds/ironnomad
Summary: In the year 2039, a twenty-year old Laura Howlett is living a quiet life with her adoptive parents in Ontario Canada. She works ten hour shifts at a construction site making shit money, but gets home in time for dinner. Until, someone tries to assault her on her way home and she spirals into berserk mode. She’s on the run for a while, hitchhiking rides to Mexico where most of her father’s belongs are still lying untouched. Before she can get there, she’s thrown into a Mexican prison after starting a fight with a police officer.While in prison she meets Clint Barton, a blind old man who lost his family and his way. He needs to get to New York to meet an old friend, and Laura just might be able to give him the help he needs.





	1. Chapter 1

ONTARIO, CANADA: January 2039  
The sound of leaves crunching underneath the bottom of her boots was something that Laura had gotten used to over the years, it meant that the heat had finally struck the trees that surrounded her ‘suburbia,’ drying out what little water they could obtain from the Ontario winter. When it snowed, it snowed heavy, freezing the leaves solid. Laura hated the cold, it reminded her of those four stone cold walls she’d seen in her nightmares. She hadn’t had many of them of late though, mostly because she barely ever slept. Not that it mattered all that much like her adoptive mother used to say, “you’ll get enough sleep when you’re dead.”  
She headed into the farmhouse, hoping that the Kinney’s were up and about so she could get some breakfast before she made her way to work. The porch light flickered on and off as she approached, it recognized her existence but didn’t have the strength to stay on fully. She made a mental note of telling John about that later, hoping that he was feeling good enough today to do something about it.  
Sarah was standing at the kitchen island, cutting up what was left of their dinner last night, before gently setting it into the searing heat of the pan on the stove. She was still in her nightgown, an apron draped loosely over her hunched shoulders and brushing against her thin legs as she made her way to the fridge. Laura met her halfway, grabbing the eggs and the few slices of bacon off the top shelf before stooping down and handing them to the older woman. She received thanks and kiss on the cheek for her efforts before she wrapped a hand around the woman. “Morning, Mama.”  
The older woman grinned, resting her frail head against Laura’s shoulder. “Morning Laura,” she greeted, breaking away and busying herself with the stove again. “Sleep alright?”  
Laura internally huffed. “I did,” she replied, shrugging her jacket off and draping it over a chair. The fire in the living room was on and burning, heating up the room to a temperature unknown to the Canadian weather bureau. “Is John up?”  
Sarah nodded her head, motioning to the old recliner that was outstretched in the living room. She padded over, careful that her steel-caps didn’t make too much noise as she entered. “You about?”  
The man barely registered what she had said, his features downturned. “Unfortunately.”  
“Good. We need to take a look at the porch light. Unless you want someone breaking a bone trying to get back into the house late at night.”  
“You mean you?”  
Laura squared her shoulders. “I didn’t realize it was going to be that much of a problem, John.”  
“Neither did I.”  
She only nodded her reply, before heading back into the kitchen to grab her jacket and her phone. The old bastard was having one of those days again, and she wasn’t going to give him the time and effort. Sarah had tried to teach her to be patient. But patience was the last virtue that her real father would have taught her if he were still alive. She knew that much. And it wasn’t like she owed anything to John, after all, Sarah had pretty much raised her since she arrived. John had just sat in his recliner, watching her through his tiny rimmed glasses with a scowl so unlike her father’s that the first few days meant she had to hold herself back from breaking his nose.  
She kissed Sarah goodbye and headed out, hoping that the guys at the construction site weren’t going to give her too much trouble. It wasn’t like them to be kind to her, but some days she truly wanted to bash their heads in. Their sexism was outstanding, to say the least. Sarah had been adamant that she try not to cause any trouble, but how could she refrain from biting back? It was in her DNA to be a snarky little shit and to fight back at oppression in every form it manifested in.  
~  
With the sun setting yet still beading down against her back, she felt sweat start to trickle down her spine, cooling down the searing flesh. She raised the sledgehammer above her head again, using her strength to drive it down against the cement floor with a harsh crack. She had made significant progress in the nine hours she had been working. Within another hour, the moon had risen and the sky turned dark, her vision now limited to the street lamps and the torches of the men still working around her. The guys had not quit their hollering in the past two hours, Laura’s patience wearing very thin as she watched it trickle away.  
When her tenth hour arrived, she straightened, heading towards the lunchroom to grab her things before she could make her way home. She saw movement out of the corner of her eye and watched an old man stop and start to stare at her as he halted against the sidewalk. She was about to call him out, shout creep at the top of her lungs before she realized that he was blind and that his round sunglasses weren’t for show. So she kept walking, finally able to make it to her locker before a hand on her shoulder stopped her.  
It drove her around in a circle until she was face to face with that idiot, David, who seemed to like making her life a living hell. He hadn’t done this before though, it was a new tactic. Perhaps he was tired of her ignoring him every time he’d try and push her buttons. “Hey there, sweetheart.” David had this amazing way at making whatever came out of his mouth sound sleazy and creepy beyond recognition. “Thought; me, you, and the boys could have a little chat before you go home.”  
Laura furrowed her brow and lifted her head in question. “No.”  
She tried to move away, but another hand met her other shoulder and pushed her back against the lockers. “I don’t take no for an answer.”  
Laura bared her teeth hoping that she could scare them off. It didn’t work. “Fine,” she growled, the animalistic sound coming from low in her throat. “How does fuck off sound, bub?”  
He didn’t like that. He took a fistful of her hair and slammed her head back against the lockers. She tried not to wince, but one of the locks pierced the skin on the back of her head. Blood trickling down her neck. “I don’t like that either. What about you boys?”  
Four more boys came sauntering into the lunchroom, eyes hungry and more animalistic than Laura’s would’ve been. She knew she could kill them all in one swift move, cutting them down like the weeds that they were. But she couldn’t. She hadn’t done anything like that in years. Instead, she ground her teeth together, ready to take whatever beating they were going to give her. “If you’re gonna hit me,” she said, rolling her head over to get a good look at David’s hideous face. “Then just fucking do it. I gotta be home for dinner in about fifteen minutes.”  
“Oh, that’s not my intention,” he chuckled, his hand still on her shoulder, but the other was traveling south, Laura twisted in his grip and his hand came to rest on her thigh, awfully close to a place she desperately didn’t want him to be. “I got something else in mind. See, I don’t much like mute girls, I prefer girls that like to scream, you know? Now, whadda say? You gonna scream for me?”  
Something in Laura’s brain snapped, and her vision went red. She knew the feeling all too well. She remembered the last time it had happened. She remembered her father’s face. She remembered his grave. The stones that she laid on the ground above his body. The look of peace on his face as he drifted away. She remembered the gun. She remembered the blood. She remembered -  
The adrenaline.  
She threw herself forward with force, screaming like an animal as she did so, grabbing the other guy that had been holding her by his head and driving him into the lockers hard enough that she felt his neck give way beneath her grip. She left him to fall against the floor. One of the other guys decided to play the hero, using a bottle as a weapon, he smashed it against her face, making her stumble back. The other two grabbed her arms trying her hold her down, but the glass had already exited her face and the wounds were already healing at a rapid pace. Her leather boots were nothing against the claws that sprung from her feet, and as she rocked herself forward, she caught her first attacker in the throat with one of those claws, the metal easily piercing through his neck and retracting again. The guy to her right squealed in fright, releasing his grip.  
She unsheathed her two claws in her right hand, catching him on the right side of the torso before he could get too far away, she then dragged them all the way through to the left-hand side, cutting him clean in half. The guy to her left barely had time to register that their next destination was straight through his head.  
Once she was free, she turned her attention to David, who was a sobbing mess against the tiled floor of the diner. He was curled up into a ball, his hands up in surrender as he tried to plead mercy. Laura bared her teeth, unsheathing all six sharpened claws as she looked down at him. “Stand up you pathetic fuck.”  
David wearily got to his feet, his hands still covering his face as he whimpered. “Please don’t hurt me. I’m sorry - “  
Laura then thrust her hand forward, piercing the delicate flesh of his genitals with the strongest metal known to man. “I just wanted to know if that was enough screaming for you, sweetheart.”  
She pulled her hand away, watching him fall to the floor as she retrieved her jacket and phone from her locker. She stepped over each of the bodies as she made her way out. Now-  
What was for dinner again?


	2. 2

MEXICO  
It was dark and reeked of piss and sweat, the stench of the combination hitting the nostrils and singeing the hair inside. It made the eyes water until those that were constantly exposed got used to it. It clung to the cold metal walls, the icy interior of the cells felt worse when night rolled around, when the heat of the day was completely juxtaposed with the harsh cold of the night that seemed to chill to the bone. It made it hard to move, and if you weren’t one of the lucky ones, that had the opportunity to kiss the asses of the guards on patrol, you went without a cover, and woke up with an ache in your chest that would kill you in the short days to come.  
Laura couldn’t remember exactly how she wound up in one of the more, “harsh” prisons in the remote area of Mexico. She remembered crossing the boarder, sure, she remembered collecting her fathers things; his dog tag and a samurai sword - which she had buried not knowing if they were going to let her cross back over with such a weapon. She watered Charles’ plants, even though they were well past death, and was heading out, when a pair of idiots stopped her and asked for money or sex.  
She killed them both.  
She then got into a fight at a local bar, knocking a man, that had tried to grab a waitress inappropriately, out cold, then attempting to fight an officer that had come to his aid.  
She didn’t remember much after that.  
She still had the dog tag, she had noticed, but it did nothing to help her keep count of the days that slowly trickled by. She didn’t know what day it was, or when the last time she had seen the outside world, but she wasn’t entirely fussed. She was more concerned about getting through until the next day. Even though she knew she would. She made one friend in the cell next to her’s, a man named Johnny. He was an ex-con, a head and face tattoo in the shape of a skull, and made his eyes look dark and sunken in he flesh of his face.  
But he was nice. And lit her cigarettes for her with his “lighter.” The bloody thing never seemed to run out of juice, no matter how many times he used it.  
She thought that was how it was going to be. She would have to kill her way out, or try and live out her long life stuck inside a cell. Until, he showed up.  
He didn’t give her his name, but they had become cell mates within a few short hours. He was an older man with milky white eyes, and grey hair that had been pulled back into a ponytail. He was well-built, but not as big as some of the other guys around, and seemed to have a good amount of smarts to keep himself alive.  
Laura knew there was something different about him, when Johnny had thrown him his lighter, and he caught it without a second thought.  
It had been weeks since the man showed up, but he still didn’t talk, and although it was stupid, Laura swore that he was watching her. Trying to figure out who and what she was. But she was trying to be as difficult as he was in giving anything away.  
Finally, almost six months into her stay, the man spoke. “You need a shower.”  
She was baffled, and slightly irritated at this. “Excuse me?” She questioned, wondering what kind of game he was playing.  
Johnny could sense something stirring and came over to the front of his cell to get a better look. “What’s he talking about?”  
Laura was unnerved. “He told me I need to shower.”  
Johnny was equally surprised, but huffed nonetheless. “Better keep shit like that to yourself old man,” he advised, taking a long drag of his cigarette. “That might get your face kicked in if you try it again.”  
“It’s the truth.”  
“And where do you suppose I shower?” Laura questioned, leaning over his sitting figure. “You stupid fuck.”  
“Without my sight my other senses heighten.” He was quick to bite back. “And you stink.”  
Laura was on the verge of throwing a punch, her claws aching to be released and jammed into his throat. “So do you. We have nothing here! If I could do something about it, I would. So shut the fuck up and continue meditating, and stop pestering me!”  
“No.”  
“What the fuck did you just say?”  
“No.”  
Laura squared her shoulders. “I’m gonna kick your face in.”  
She took a step forward, but he was up in an instant, eyes level with hers and a look in them that told her he wasn’t backing down. They stayed like this a while, eyes never leaving each other’s until Laura sniggered, “fuck you.”  
“The names Clint Barton,” he replied, taking his seat again. “And you must be Laura Howlett.”  
Laura stiffened. “And how the fuck do you know that?”  
“Cause I knew your father. Your real one. You know, the Wolverine?”  
Laura had to stop herself from jumping at him and slashing him to ribbons. Everyone that her father knew was dead, he had told her about them, but she couldn’t fathom the idea that the man sitting in her cell, in a Mexican prison, had known her father and had known about him being the Wolverine. Perhaps he knew where the others like her had run off to, and he could show her back to her original path, but she doubted it, and Johnny voiced her thoughts, “man your delusional. If your on any drugs, please by all means, share with the rest of us.”  
Clint didn’t say another word after that, not for three days. Until Laura woke up in the middle of the night to hear him screaming in his sleep. Screaming the name of a woman, crying and sputtering while doing so. He repeated her name over and over, as if she would hear him.  
Natasha.


End file.
